the illusion of free will
people say shigaraki is responsible for the deaths he caused, and while i don’t completely deny that, it’s way more complicated than just “free will.” what people miss is that he was groomed from the age of five, when he was at his most vulnerable until he finally broke free from afo’s grasp. afo deliberately took him in at a point where he was completely dependent on others for guidance, then shaped him into the perfect successor.
to shigaraki, his master wasn’t just a villain, he was his savior, the only one who “understood” him, the only one who gave him a sense of purpose after the world abandoned him. and that’s exactly how manipulation works. afo didn’t just take him in, he rewired his entire mind, fed him lies, reinforced his hatred, and conditioned him to believe that destruction was his only salvation. shigaraki never had a chance to form his own worldview because afo made sure to mold it for him.
look at shigaraki’s reaction when he was separated from afo, it wasn’t just anger, it was pure desperation. that’s the reaction of someone who has been so deeply conditioned that he doesn’t know how to function outside of his abuser’s influence. shigaraki was entirely dependent on afo, and when you’re raised under constant manipulation, you don’t suddenly “wake up” and realize you’ve been controlled your whole life.
it doesn’t work that way. when he saw all might trying to save bakugo while attacking the league, he felt betrayed by the world all over again. to him, it was proof that heroes will never save people like him. but that idea wasn’t his, it was something afo planted in his mind for years, reinforcing it over and over until shigaraki believed it as an absolute truth. so when afo was no longer there, what was left? nothing but the doctrine his master forced onto him. if he wasn’t groomed, if he wasn’t brainwashed into thinking destruction was his only option, then he would have taken another path. but that was never an option for him because he never had the freedom to choose in the first place. as afo himself admitted, shigaraki never had free will. none of his choices were ever his own.
compare this to dabi and toga. they were abused, but they never had an outside force controlling them like afo did with shigaraki. they became villains on their own terms, dabi out of revenge, toga out of rejection from society. but shigaraki? his entire ideology was forced onto him. if afo had gotten to shoto instead, then shoto would have ended up just like shigaraki.
and here’s the worst part; nobody in the story even questions it. if horikoshi wanted us to humanize the villains, then he should have given them a humanizing death, something that forced people to acknowledge what they went through and how they ended up like this. but instead, nobody even stops to ask why afo had to groom a child into being his successor. nobody wonders why japan’s greatest villain was so reliant on manipulating a mentally ill, traumatized young man into doing his bidding. they just see shigaraki as a monster.
shigaraki never had a choice, but the world acts like he did.
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